Fun Discoveries While Learning Languages Language learning is obviously hard work. What's something fun or amusing you have discovered about language -- either your native one or the one you're learn

Irene Colthurst

Fun Discoveries While Learning Languages Language learning is obviously hard work. What's something fun or amusing you have discovered about language -- either your native one or the one you're learning -- while learning?

Fun words? Idioms? Interesting grammar differences?

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May 6, 2019 2:19 PM

Comments · 7

I don't know how fun this is, but I was thinking about the word malaria in English. Whoever coined this word in English probably had no idea it was spread by mosquitoes. The word malaria would mean something like a condition of bad air. Had they know it was caused by mosquitoes, they would have named it something like nasty-mosquitoes-biting-you-in-the-rear-end-disease.

May 6, 2019

In Spanish, I once said something totally hilarious with reflexive verbs, of course, I wasn't trying to be funny but it turns out you can’t use them how I did. The teacher and I had a good laugh.

May 7, 2019

The particles in Japanese are really interesting, and I like to look for the etimology of words. Learning languages in general are so fun if I could I would learn all, but I neither have the time nor money

May 7, 2019

It's funny when I try to repeat some sentences to Google translator. Sometimes I go wrong, and the sentence becomes a crazy mess. I would say that I get in trouble when I try to repeat these words:

Rare x where

bad x bed

dead x dad

left x laugh

Head x had

Set x sat

sand x send

bed x bad

Order x odor

Can you imagine that situation at a restaurant?
"Could you take my odor, please?." hahaha... That's not good.

May 7, 2019